


Spring-Heeled Jim

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Criminal Masterminds, F/M, Gen, M/M, Manipulations, Morrissey lyrics reference, Power Dynamics, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His childhood and teen years already comprising a laundry list of sociopathic behaviours, young Jim Moriarty stands on the verge of adulthood with a mind full of grand schemes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring-Heeled Jim

It felt nice—punching Father Michael.

Not as nice as stomping rats behind the pub, Jim reckoned, but nicer than Kate Mulaney’s clumsy attempts to suck his cock. Which is what Father Michael had been doing a few times a week for nearly a year-- it was their arrangement. But then. Father Michael had tried to bugger him, and Jim Moriarty wasn’t having it, because nobody _did_ to him. So he cracked Father Michael in the eye, sent him sprawling, spitting put-on outrage at Jim’s nerve. Father Michael gave Moriarty his tenner before he left, though, anyway. And when he showed up to chapel next morning and the other students murmured about what had blacked his eye, Father Michael said he’d walked into a door. Later in Latin class, Father Michael called the roll: “Moriarty?”

“Present, Father,” Jim said, and then he gave Father Michael a wink. Father Michael looked down at his book and bit his lip.

Next day Father Michael was on his knees again. And he weren’t prayin’ neither.

It was easy money, and Jim thought it was funny how Father Michael turned sniveling as soon as he turned the lock on his office door. Father Michael was pathetic; it was easy. If Jim said he’d go to the headmaster, Father gave him cigarettes, whiskey, more money, a letter to his parents saying he was a fine student and an example of piety to his schoolmates. If Jim said he’d made a date with Kate Mulaney, or with Peter Donovan, or with Mother Mary Thomas, Father Michael tried harder to please him--deep-throated his cock, made ridiculous high-pitched sounds, swallowed Jim’s spunk. Coming was nothing—Jim could make himself come anytime. Money and fags and drink, he could steal. But the _power_. That was what kept Jim coming back to Father Michael’s office before Latin, after supper, between Sunday masses.

Other boys raved about getting off with girls; Jim didn’t see the point of girls unless there was something else to be had from it. He’d once got Kate Mulaney and her eejit friend Aisling Brady behind the garden shed outside the priory, then convinced them to take off their tops and kiss each other’s tits. His pals had bet Jim he couldn’t—five quid apiece—and one of them had watched from inside the shed through a crack between the boards;  Jim got twenty pounds out of it (one bloke didn’t pay up, so Jim kicked him in the gut until he vomited). Kate Mulaney suggested Jim could have a go at her and Aisling, both, and he called them hoors and they ran off crying and cursing him; Jim laughed and threw stones at their backs.

People did what they had to, to get what they wanted. Jim knew this—had known it as long as he’d known anything. So, he figured out what people wanted, and he gave it to them. But for a price. It was shocking, really, how transparent people were, and how easy it was to make them give Jim what he wanted, thinking they were pleasing themselves. People were spineless and stupid and infuriating, but they were also useful, and sometimes amusing.

When Jim was eight, he got two five-year-olds to steal sweets from the corner shop and hand them over to him; he gave them each a little bit of the take and sold the rest to his schoolmates. When he was ten he arranged “boxing” matches in his gran’s back garden and facilitated wagers on the outcomes. By his fourteenth birthday he’d shagged two girls, four boys, and a novice nun who later disappeared amid rumours she’d got up the stick and went to Kerry to have the baby. He’d burned an empty garage. He’d stolen more cars than he could count (but bikes were better; he could sell them). He’d put a cat in a bag and thrown it in the river. He’d called his ma a hoor and he'd punched his da. He’d sold his gran’s pills.

Jim always kept his eyes out for the next thing. If he was shagging a girl, he was thinking about how he could shag her brother. And if he shagged the brother, he was thinking about how he could threaten to tell the brother’s friends he was a sissy so the brother would cry, beg Jim not to tell—he’d do _anything_ if only Jim didn’t tell. . .

Jim spent a lot of time now that he was nearly seventeen thinking about much grander things than stealing cars or extorting his schoolmates’ pocket money. He was nearly done with school, and then he could do what he liked. There was a lot he could accomplish, he reckoned, if he could keep himself above the fray, at arm’s length. Blameless. Sure there were people who thought they wanted something from him, and Jim would give it. Then they’d owe him. Jim thought he could direct them in the execution of some elaborate plans he was devising: plans that would knock people utterly off-balance, make them feel deeply afraid, remind them they were powerless. People were nothing. Jim knew he had a rare and exceptional gift, and he was going to use it to get more of what he wanted, which wasn’t just a tenner and a pack of smokes.  Jim Moriarty wanted more than a priest on his knees. He wanted the world on its knees.

He’d have it, too.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired in part by the song "Spring-Heeled Jim" by Morrissey. You can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AzZls49cts


End file.
